Lucifer Comet (2464 CE)

by Ian Wallace

  Skipper B. J. Methuen jerked his head around toward Zorbin as the exec dropped his voice to read off trajectory specifications. Methuen, in rank a commander, at thirty-eight still young enough to be thrilled by the challenges of his missions, ordered pursuit and shipcast the alert: “Now hear this. This is the skipper. All stations comet-ready. For now, that is all.”

  Then Methuen bent to his controls, training his ship on a screen-pip which denoted comet position, jerking the ship into high acceleration from which he and his crew were largely protected by the Ventura’s inertial screen. Zorbin was giving him readings of the comet’s ice and mineral composition, its mean diameter (just over two kilometers), its mean specific density (about 0.67 grams), its overall gravitational mass (about twenty trillion kilograms or twenty billion tons), its relative inertial mass or momentum (an enormous kilogram number, gravitational mass raised to the eleventh power, because of its ghostly velocity). Methuen whistled low: a direct snatch of this hurtling monster would have about as much chance as a harpooning of a twenty* five-meter whale from a one-man kayak using a tarpon line. Nevertheless it would be necessary somehow, to pull the monster out of its inertial orbit into a direct tug-line toward Earth. It would have to be done in tactical stages, each one so chancy that it might prove ship-lethal.

  There was also a question of strategic judgment: even outside the Sol System, would it be scientifically ethical to ensnare for destruction a comet so unique? Methuen had to make his own judgment: in these years before nearly instantaneous iradio communication, he was more isolated from home base than a seventeenth-century sea captain in the farthest quarters of a remote ocean—a radio message, limited to light-velocity, would take 470 years to reach Earth and another 470 to return. Methuen could of course dispatch a robot carrier, which would reach Earth and bring back a reply in a mere three weeks, and meanwhile he could be tailing the comet; but that would lose him three weeks of fishing time and could bring a reprimand.

  Dark, lean middle-tall B. J. Methuen was an uneasy perfectionist whose inter-conflicting ideation in the planning stage did not stop him from reaching reasonably quick decisions and staying with them during action—uneasy all the way as perfection eluded him, and not at all happy if he attained only ninety-eight percent of perfection. It was the turbulent planning-balancing process that was inwardly agitating sober-faced Methuen while the Ventura closed distance between herself and her prey.

  Presently Methuen queried: “Zorbin, do you know what I’ve been thinking about?” His quiet middle-baritone falsely expressed whole serenity.

  Zorbin replied promptly: “First, ethics. Second, tactics— but you really haven’t reached tactics yet.”

  “Right. Pray zero-in on ethics. What might be all the consequences of catching and bringing home this extra-large extra-fast comet?”

  “Call her Gladys. She’ll be your seventh.”

  “All right, Comet Gladys. Consequences?”

  “The Sahara Desert will receive a water bonanza. And the entire astronomical world will be mad as hell because they weren’t given a chance to study Gladys alive.”

  “Which of the two will mean more to Astrofleet?”

  “The Sahara, probably. Besides, science will have our report together with detailed behavioral data.”

  “Is there any chance that Gladys might reach the Solar System if left alone?”

  “Most unlikely. A comet orbit rarely exceeds a few light years, a parsec at most. Anyhow, if she did reach Sol, it wouldn’t happen at her present velocity for another fifteen millennia. But to be sure about the orbit, I’ll need more tracking figures.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Zorbin. Now: consequences if we bypass her and report when we reach home that she was too interesting to stop?”

  “Maybe not too bad, if we come home with another ice-comet. But science will still be mad as hell, because we didn’t bring Gladys in for study.”

  “Science gets mad either way?”

  “With science, you can’t win.”

  “If we bypass Gladys, how do you calculate our chances of coming home with twenty billion tons of other ice?”

  “We aren’t likely to find another comet this big, Skipper. With great luck, we might snare two or three totaling that mass, but it’s unlikely, and you know how tough it is to bring in two or three altogether. Gladys is a big bastard.”

  “Thank you again. Any recommendations?”

  “None, Skipper, none at all. I’ve told you all I know.”

  ‘Then we’ll continue pursuit, and decide what to do when we catch her.” And Methuen went into tactical discussion with his exec, meanwhile increasing acceleration until they settled into sprint-pursuit speed of forty thousand times the velocity of light.

  In sixteen hours, Gladys was overtaken.

  As they came in on Gladys, they were braking under heavy g-force. They veered into her wake, and they kept on braking until they were down to Gladys-velocity.

  Methuen queried: “Mr. Zorbin, do you have enough tracking figures to plot her orbit?”

  Zorbin threw him a peculiar look. “If my figures are right, it’s a hell of a funny orbit. I really ought to have another twenty-four hours.”

  “You have them, sir. Meanwhile we are locked on behind her at her own velocity, which makes the comet and the ship together a relatively stationary unit. Why don’t you bring in your relief? And then, let’s you and I go out and inspect our catch.”

  Gladys was a real beaut. They circled her in the tender. She was dark on space-side, of course; but on Bellatrix-side she ice-gleamed like a miniature moon disc. They took particular notice that the comet surface was deeply and complexly crevassed like a glacier surface, which meant that Gladys had never passed through a planetary atmosphere which would have melted surface ice with friction heat and produced a vitreous exterior.

  The two officers, alone in the tender, were doing more than eyeball-gazing. Methuen manned a battery of instruments which measured parameters like stratification (layerings of comet-magma, comparable to tree rings in three dimensions) and comparative densities cubic meter by cubic meter all the way in to the core. Zorbin watched other instruments having equal penetration but measuring other parameters, particularly chemical analysis by cubic meters; he was also localizing significant foreign inclusions which had been picked up in the comet’s travels, such as siderites.

  They were making their second circuit of darkside, on a new angle of declination, when Zorbin said, very low: “There is something peculiar almost all the way in, deep at center; I had a hint of it on brightside, but I get it more sharply here without light interference.”

  “Oh?”

  “Wait till I get the coordinates right. Latitude 49°2f, longitude 82° even” (by convention they had laid off coordinates using the comet’s leading direction as polar north), “depth 0.92 kilometers—that’s about 0.09 this side of gravity-center. It’s funny-—”

  “What’s funny?”

  “Relatively tiny inclusions composed almost entirely of organics.”

  “Got any shapes yet?”

  “Wait till we’ve made about two more passes at twenty-degree declinations.”

  On the next pass, Zorbin said, “I have to tell you now that the distribution of organics is roughly what you’d expect to find in mammalian bodies.”

  “Way down in there?”

  “Way down in there.”

  “How about shapes?”

  “Not talking yet, Skipper. One more pass.”

  And during that fourth pass, Methuen was informed dead-voice by Zorbin: “There are two organic bodies, both about Erth-human size. One of them looks like a plain ordinary human—like you or me, or perhaps it is a female. The other looks like a human, too—only, a human with large wings.”

  Methuen meditated; Zorbin studied. Methuen said, “Chemical analysis in agreement?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Nothing else? We aren’t kidding ourselves?”

  “It’s hard to imagine w
hat else those inclusions could be.” “Mr. Zorbin, it’s just as hard to imagine what you say they are. Apart from your wings—how in hell would they have gotten themselves caught in twenty billion tons of high-speed comet?”

  “Skipper, do you expect me to tell you?”

  “They aren’t smashed?”

  “Not smashed, as far as instruments can tell me. Well: mammoths have been found in glaciers—”

  “That’s different.”

  “Yes.”

  “My own studies are about through for now, Mr. Zorbin. Want another pass for confirmation of yours?”

  “That I’d appreciate. Pray change the declination by forty degrees this time.”

  When the final darkside pass was more than half done, Zorbin said crisply, “No change.”

  “Wings and all?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Those wings—could they be accidentally associated inclusions?”

  “I have a holograph built up during five passes at varying declinations totaling a hundred twenty degrees of arc. The wings are wings, and they are connected to one of the guys. And the guys are frozen face-to-face down there, for love or for war.”

  Steady pursuit continued, while Zorbin or his assistant plotted tracking figures.

  Over lunch next day, Methuen used a lull in small talk to inquire casually: “Saul, do you think you can plot an orbit now?”

  Zorbin frowned. “I can, B.J., and it will amaze you.”

  “Want to tell me now?”

  “Absolutely straight linear orbit. No curvature at all.”

  “No question?”

  “No question. If Gladys should veer from the straight line, something new would be pushing or pulling her—and at her velocity, that would have to be quite a something.”

  Methuen meditated. He had planned a complex and dangerous procedure for pulling this monster out of some orbit to which she was tenaciously glued with a momentum of 6.168 X 1024 kilograms. For practical purposes, that was her rushing weight. Get ahead of the comet, turn, match speeds with her, snare her with transponder beams going past, slow her a little, release her; repeat the maneuver, repeat, repeat; and if they didn’t either sprain all their transponder guns or get pulled into Gladys by her gravity and space-wind, they’d have her tamed whereafter they could simply tug her at gradually increasing velocity in the direction they would choose, which would be toward Erth. But if the orbit was linear, this procedure might be somewhat simplified…. “What,” he queried, “is the direction of this linear orbit?” Zorbin swallowed another mouthful of rehydrated eggs, then told his plate: “Directly toward Erth. No change of orbit required.”

  After thought, Methuen said carefully, “Apart from understanding that this reduces our tactics to utter simplicity—do you comprehend how unlikely this is?”

  “Except,” said Zorbin, “for something I noticed yesterday. Remember toward the end of the chase we crossed the comet’s orbit?”

  “Right.”

  “Just as we crossed it, the instruments showed a slight Erthward slew. Our position at that instant was, right ascension 0546, declination minus nine degrees forty-one minutes.” “Well?”

  “Well, B.J.?”

  Having thought, Methuen murmured, “I’ll be damned!” “You’re thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “The five-forty-six gradient.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  “Way out here, Saul?” In his fearsome prevoyant dream, that number 546….

  “Way out here. Spotted eleven prior times by various ships, but never farther out than eighty-nine parsecs from Erth.” “Saul, my thoughts are multiple and confused, but three thoughts are standing out.”

  “May I guess, B.J.?”

  “Pray do.”

  “One: that Comet Gladys may be riding the gradient, which would account for her horrible speed.”

  “Two?”

  “That now we won’t have to pull her out of orbit; we can.

  simply get ahead of her, latch onto her with transponders, and ease her up to the kind of velocity we will need in order to reach Erth as soon as you deem desirable.”

  “Not necessarily the order of my thought, Saul, but you do have two of them. What’s the third?”

  “That we should follow the comet’s example and stay on the gradient in order to maintain the same Erthward speed with reduced thrust and less engine wear.”

  “Saul, somehow what remains of lunch has lost attraction for me. How about you?”

  “I’m with you, B.J. Let’s hit the bridge.”

  They bypassed Gladys, got in front of her, hooked her, and began the patient procedure of pulling her faster and faster. Methuen hit the PA: “Now hear this, this is the skipper. Well done all hands; very nice. Gladys is under control and we are making for Erth. Move into towing routine. That is all.”

  He snapped off the PA and said low, “Mr. Zorbia, please bring her gradually to nine thousand C, and hold that velocity until we are one astronomical unit off Pluto-orbit.”

  “Will do, sir.”

  “What do you think, Mr. Zorbin? Does the gradient extend indefinitely out into space? Does it hold that line of 0546 by minus 0941 indefinitely, or does it eventually begin to show curvature? And since comets normally have closed eliptical orbits, what has Gladys been doing before we found her? Did she in some curved orbit intersect the gradient and straighten out and speed up? Or has she been traveling the gradient since origin?”

  “Plenty to talk about, Skipper, during our two weeks going home. I’ll add a couple of wonderings. How did two humanoids get themselves caught in the center of a comet without being smashed? And did you ever before hear of a humanoid with wings?”

  “There are angels, perhaps, Mr. Zorbin.”

  “There are also perhaps devils, Commander Methuen.”

  The remark convoluted the Methuen stomach: devil in the comet, dream of a next-year Erth-attack from space, 546. … Resolutely he reminded himself that he did not believe in prevoyance; but from that moment onward, he had a developing thing about Comet Gladys.

  3

  Soon after Dorita Lanceo reached the age of fifteen (in a year which her planet Erth counted as 2462 AD), her school achievement began to decline—not nearly to the point of failure, but to a level so far below her usual stellar performance that faculty began to wonder. Dorita was a petite long-haired blonde, round-faced, blue-eyed, kiss-lipped, shaped like a poet’s divine dream, and popular with faculty because of the childish gaiety that pervaded her mental brilliance. Eventually her counselor questioned her about her sagging scholarship; Dorita passed it off by making a little face and confessing that these days she was thinking about boys a lot. She wasn’t. She had already weighed boys (that is, two boys and one faculty man from another school during the past two years) and had found them wanting, not as thrill devices, but as matters of sustaining interest for herself specifically.

  What undermined her scholarship was her calculated decision to shift some of her left-brain-lobe attention away from school work and into the wonderfully powerful and nearly occult searchings that her right lobe was bringing off.

  Dorita’s prime mover, formulated at the age of nine, was a fixed belief that anything forbidden without convincing reasons required testing, and that she was the one to do this testing. Of course, you couldn’t always determine what was forbidden; you had to come face-to-face with the forbidding; or else you had to infer that something was forbidden, simply by noticing that it wasn’t being done.

  As for the convincing reasons which might justify a forbidding, they were extremely hard to learn without committing a violation and experiencing the consequences. From first-remembered childhood, Dorita had been violating this and that, including (at seven) her mother’s locked diary. She had learned how to open it with a bobby pin and had been caught, in the midst of engrossment. Frequent incidents had drawn punishment, some of it corporal; but early on, she had decided that intentional punishment was merely part o
f the forbidding attitude and did not in itself constitute a convincing reason for desisting.

  Traumatically, her mother died when Dorita was entering puberty, leaving her father to guide her through and beyond it. Her father was a good beloved buddy; he often took her on vacations and roughed it with her in the mountains; but he wouldn’t touch the area of sex education. This hit Dorita as being so senseless that it must be an irrational tabu; and that was why she entered into her first seduction when she was thirteen and reinforced her findings twice when she was fourteen. The series had satisfied her tabu-blasting compulsion in that direction, and she dropped it to move into more interesting areas.

  She never made any attempt upon her father, not even when alone with him in a night camp. Long ago she had comprehended the dangers of interpersonal stickiness, which was why she had eschewed her male classmates. She and her father were great buddies, and she wanted it to stay like that. Dorita was ruthless only when she was homing on a defined target.

  Her decision at fifteen to shift her major attention from scholarship to more arcane concerns resulted from a dismaying discovery. She had run out of locked doors to open; and therefore she put her right lobe to full-time and her left to part-time work in a survey of the potential field.

  Dorita had the misfortune to come into her world a bit late; her society had already largely cleared the old tabu-tangle. (This would have been accomplished a lot earlier had some prior society, say the 20th century West, been blessed by the existence of Dorita.) All but a few minority religions (and these did not interest Dorita) smiled benignly at almost every sort of blasphemy and vice, regarding these as wild oats which needed to be sown before the young sinner could be religiously domesticated. There remained in her world no minority prejudices of any consequence, and every imaginable vocational field was wide open for qualified women. In terms of Dorita’s assumptions, all of which were zeroed-in on the concept of unprecedented door openings, there existed practically no locked door worth breaking through—except, perhaps, some interesting aspects of the laws.